Lost
by Kaatje
Summary: A NW tale about love (of course), redemption, betrayal, serial killers, occultists, venegeful ghosts, and more...
1. Prologue: Midnight Suicides...

Author: Kaatje

Overall Rating: 15

Summary: A NW tale about unrequited love (of course), redemption, betrayal, serial killers, and much more…

Disclaimers: General NW spoilers, nothing specific…

*Yes, this is my first fic, so feedback would be absolutely adored! You don't have to be kind, though. Even if you hate it, drop me a line. Constructive criticism is always, always welcome… 

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Lost

Introduction

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"-Are you spirit or are you flesh?"

"-I am Sorrow…"

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Hollenbrooke, New York: July 1979

Paige Sullivan spread her hands over the rail of the apartment balcony, her thoughts wondering aimlessly. The moon hung in the sky, lending its white light to the land below, casting everything in a luminous pearly sheen. Stars twinkled merrily in the sky, suspended in the inky blackness as if by magic. A cool breeze ruffled stray hairs from her blonde, neatly plaited braid. 

She looked carefully out into the night, fully appreciating, as much as she was able, the beautiful view of the city sidewalks below her. Most of her lipstick had been chewed off and she had black circles under her eyes that made her look as if she had missed a month's worth of sleep. Her cheeks were hollow, giving her normally young face a gaunt, tired look. Her hands trembled violently, and her skin was cast in a deathly, white pallor that was almost ethereal under the light of the moon. Liquid, silver tears ran down the length of her face, leaving visible trails of sorrow. 

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I am sorrow; she thought, despair clawing through her heart. _I am sorrow._ The words resonated in her, nowhere else to go. Incoherent half-truths spun crazily through her barely wakened mind with an unleashed fervor that made her shake with fear and agitation. 

Putting a small, fragile hand up to her face in a feeble attempt to shut out the madness, she wondered briefly through the hurricane of thoughts how she'd ever ended up like this. From normal teenager to bereaved lunatic, she thought with a hysterical laugh. From girl to helplessly old woman and back again. And back again. She wasn't quite back again…

Music whirled from inside to out briefly flitting around her ears before continuing its travel to the lonely world beyond. It was something new, she reflected as she tilted her ear up to listen. It was something with a beat to it, rhythmic and heady and full of undertones that shocked senses into responding. Paige closed her eyes for a moment to sink into it, to become part of its never-ending symphony so it would carry her away from here, from her troubles, and from the people who didn't really quite see her. She wanted desperately to be gone, to slide slowly into the abyss of oblivion, to fade away into the depths of the eternal night. 

Her eyes still closed, she swayed to the music, her hand lying gently on her mouth. It was a sad song even though it sounded nice; she listened to the words wash over her, feeling every lyric laying the last fatal blow to a horribly damaged soul.

"By the shadows of the night I go 

I move away from the crowded room 

That sea of shallow faces masked in warm regret 

They don't know how to feel 

They don't know what is lost…"

The tears came harder now, faster and she stopped swaying and stood absolutely still, a useless defense against the cruelty of the outside world. A coldness spread inside of her, something lonely and dead that stripped of her humanity and vitality. She broke the stillness to rest her thin cheek on the rail, a gesture of subservience to whatever gods might be watching. She was conquered now, her dreams had died a slow, brutal death, and there was no redemption for someone like her.

The glowing orb of the moon was rising in the sky, higher now, so far above her. Paige had never paid much attention at all to the moon before, when everything had been all right. It had been a constant thing to her, something unchanging and immutable, nothing to pay that close attention to. She was half-amazed that she could ignore something so mysterious and beautiful, something that had always been right above her, just a bit out of her reach. 

Sighing, she lifted her cheek from the rail and unwound her thick, curly blonde hair from its severe plait. It cascaded to the point just above the small of her back, like a golden waterfall. She ran her hands through it, taming the curls with her deft fingers, and lifted her eyes to the sky above. The stars continued to twinkle, as happily as before, oblivious to the heartbreak and misery that unfolded underneath.

She knew what she had to do. She swung a leg over the side of the balcony, and looked down fifteen stories to the ground below. To fall fifteen stories would be to court a certain kind of death.

Paige closed her eyes briefly and moved her lips without sound to a silent prayer her father had taught her when she had been younger. Then, with no great ceremony or circumstance, she merely slid off the rail. Her lips continued to move even as she was falling until the moment her head impacted with the soft, lush earth below.

A prayer before dying.

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	2. Starry Night Murders...

Part One

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"Now - while the leaves still dance on the wind   
While the moon and the clouds come spinning   
Will you whisper my name again?   
Again and again and again…" 

-Garbage "Desperate"

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The Starry Night Hotel and Lounge: July 1979

"Goddamn, Paris. What do you think of it?" Detective Ken Williams examined the battered, blood-spattered, spray painted outline where Paige Sullivan had once been with avid interest and the fervid gleam of horrid fascination in his beady, gray eyes. "Why do you think she did it?

"I'm not Paige Sullivan, so I can't tell you why she did it." Detective William Paris, a seasoned cop on the Hollenbrooke police force, studied the grassy spot just above the sidewalk where outline was and then looked up to the balcony from which she had fallen. "I couldn't tell you at all."

"Well, she'd have to be downright crazy to do something like that." Williams stroked his thin, brown mustache with a thoughtful look on his face. "You'd have to be beyond insane to murder a guy and then jump off a balcony. Way beyond insane."

"Not just murder, Williams." Detective Paris lit a cigarette and took a deep, consuming drag. "She mutilated him." His voice dropped to a hushed, harsh whisper. "Chained him to the master bed and ripped into him with a silver hunting knife. She stabbed him a hundred and eleven times in various parts of the body." Paris threw his cigarette down on the ground in disgust. "The only crime Jonathan Freeman committed was having the bad taste to pick up Paige as his 'partner' for the night."

"Jonathan Freeman was the guy's name?" Williams took out his field notebook and began to write in brief shorthand. "And Paige Sullivan was the girl's?" Rocking back slightly on heels, Williams stopped writing to study what he had put down on his field notebook. 

The evidence was damning, he thought with a frown. Paige's fingerprints had been all over that knife and a tiny fiber of her slinky, barely there, blue cocktail dress had been found underneath Jonathan's fingernails. Plus, what said 'guilty' more than committing suicide moments after the death of the person you were sharing a room with? 

"You really think Paige killed Jonathan?" Williams searched the face of his partner, needing to find some comfort and absolution in the familiar face. "I mean how does a twenty year old hooker, who is barely five feet and weighs eighty-five pounds, fight and chain a twenty-eight year old man, who is six foot three and over two hundred pounds, to the bed? It just doesn't add up."

"Maybe she didn't fight with him. Maybe he let her tie him up. Some people like that kind of thing, you know? Maybe Paige convinced him it was all part of the 'entertainment' for that evening."

"Yeah, but it requires some amount of strength to rip and slash through skin more than a hundred times. Paige was twenty and human to boot. She wouldn't have that kind of strength."

"Maybe she wasn't what she seemed."

"Who discovered Jonathan's body?" Williams had a point to make, and damned if he was going to let the practical Paris ruin his line of thinking.

"A maid coming to work saw Paige's body, and called the cops. After they'd discovered what room she fell from, they went in to investigate."

"And that doesn't strike you as odd?" Williams shook his head and balled his fists tightly at his side. "Jonathan's being attacked with a hunting knife, in fact, he's stabbed several times over. He had to have screamed, cried for help, or something. You can't tell me the people next door didn't hear what was going on."

"They might've heard, and just not reported it. This isn't exactly the greatest section of town, just in case you hadn't noticed." Paris shrugged with a certain jaded dispassion on his face. "People don't usually call the police down here. It's all part of a 'code-of-honor' system thing they've got going. They don't rat each other out."

"Still, there's something not right. I can just feel it."

"Maybe so, but if Paige didn't kill him, who did? And why did she commit suicide?" 

"I don't know." Williams's eyes went cool and blank with fierce determination. "But I'm going to find out." Signaling for his partner to follow, Williams walked over to their squad car and slipped into the driver seat.

"Where are we going?"

"The morgue," Williams answered curtly as he started up the engine of the car. "We're going to have a close-up and personal encounter with Paige."

They rode the rest of the fifteen minutes to the morgue in silence, each man immersed in their own thoughts. When they arrived, Williams let Paris do the sweet-talking and badge flashing until the Chief Medical Examiner finally forgave the lateness of the hour and let the two weary detectives see the body. 

An assistant swathed in blue scrubs led them to the autopsy room where Paige had recently taken up residence. He carefully uncovered the white sheet draped over the body, giving both Williams and Paris a distinct and uncensored view of how people looked after they had fallen fifteen stories to the ground.

It wasn't a pretty sight. The face of Paige Sullivan was almost entirely purple and black, save the spots where the flesh had turned gray from hours of being dead. Her delicate fingers were curled stiffly into claws from rigor mortis, and her mouth was ajar, forming words that would never be spoken. Her eyes, glassy and flat, were still open.

Williams had seen dead people before, some twice as bad off as Paige was now, but the still, small form lying at an impossible angle on the stone-cold slab, disturbed him more than he cared to admit. 

"She looks like hell." 

"Well, she's been dead three hours. How do you think you'd look if been dead three hours, Paris?"

"I'm just commenting on what I see." Paris gave Paige a light shove with his hand, taking in every detail of the woman he fully considered to be a cold-blooded killer. 

"Don't do that. Haven't you any respect for the dead? 

"When the dead person in question is psychopathic murderer, then no, I don't." 

"Still, dead is dead. And Paige Sullivan is definitely dead." 

"Whatever." Paris shook his head, dismissing his partner completely, and bent down to examine her more closely. "Why didn't they close her eyes? They always close the eyes."

"Maybe they forgot this time."

"But why? That's completely out of accepted procedure."

"Like I know? If you're so hot to have her eyes closed, why don't you do it yourself?"

Paris rolled his own eyes expansively, and turned back to the body. There was evidence to be found here, some deep, primal instinct in Paris's bones were screaming it. And Paris never ignored instinct.

"Hey, look at this." It wasn't long before Paris found something, something that chilled him to the very core. "Look at the ring on her finger."

"Yeah, so?" Williams leaned over to inspect the ring, which looked to him like a harmless black flower of indeterminate origin.

"Yeah, so? Jesus, Williams, it's a black dahlia."

"A black dahlia?" Williams snapped straight up, a sense of foreboding seeping into him. "Are you sure? Sullivan's a human name."

"Take a look for yourself." Paris unscrewed the ring from a finger with some difficulty and handed it over to his partner. "But believe me, I'd know a black dahlia anywhere." He held up his own hand to show a ring identical to Paige's.

"Yeah, I guess you would." Williams twisted the ring around in his hands, comparing it with the black iris engraved on the face of his watch. "But Paige was human, wasn't she?"

"I assumed so." Paris narrowed his eyes and stared broodingly off into space. "This puts a whole new spin on the situation, doesn't it?"

"We should look into what Jonathan was, shouldn't we?" Williams adjusted his navy tie absently. "I mean, if he was a human…" He trailed off, and looked around slightly to reassure himself that they were alone in the room. 

Paris nodded ascent, finishing his partner's thoughts for him. "We need to do some research. I'll drive back to the precinct." 

Williams tossed the ring into his pocket and followed Paris. But as he walked away, he thought could feel the muddied, flat eyes of Paige watching him.

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	3. Redemption Lost...

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Part 2

" 'Can't repeat the past?' he cried incredulously. 'Why, of course you can.' "

-The Great Gatsby

The hot, dense air of the unbearable New York night crept into Paige's apartment under a window that had been left slightly a jar. The occasional stifling breeze that managed to slip past now and again blew the lace curtains, which lay on either side of the window, carelessly and teasingly. Excited chattering, low weeping, helpless screaming, and the dull roar of cars pounding away at the pavement, murmured and swelled below, twining through the desperate darkness, seeking release from the despair that was life in the city.

A raven, grown weary and tired from its desperate flight across the land, landed on one of Paige's stone windowsills. It measured and scanned the inside of the apartment with tiny, black eyes that were bulging from a fixed point above its' curved, sharp beak. It fluttered about restlessly until, moments later; it took to the open skies where it would languidly sail for hours upon end in a cool air current and then, once again, would take residence on some other hapless person's sill. 

The ancient, black phone that hung loosely from the far wall of the apartment began to ring shrilly, over and over, not knowing that Paige wasn't home- that in fact she would never be home again. 

Some woe-begotten soul slipped a twenty under the door and knocked twice, two sharp tattoos of noise that resonated through the building. When no one answered, they left, their confusion mixing in the air like something tangible and hollow.

"It's something wonderful, you know? To finally be going there is just…" The faint, hasty flow of conversation floated like a melody into the apartment, up and over in a sinuous fashion that bespoke of hope and death and love all blending together seamlessly. It was what Paige had loved when she was alive, the echo of human words whispered and shouted in emotion as they passed by her on their journey, never-stopping. Sometimes, when she had felt too sick or disgusted to go out, she would lie on her exhausted, sagging bed and listen- just listen. You could hear all the tragedies and comedies of the world if you just lay still and listened. 

A hand moved in the dark. Someone's light breathing and quick movements flashed in the apartment, disrupting the tantalizing stillness. A heart trembled in fear, beating itself slowly to death, counting down the precious seconds until it would stop forever. Hurt blossomed in a mind, unbelievable pain and anguish that was unforgivable weight. A small sigh escaped well-formed lips, pressing itself into the air, unseen and unheard. The shadow- that was what it sometimes thought of itself- slid like silver against the wall, looking and searching much as the raven had done not even an hour before. 

When it found the pictures, cozily snug in a night-stand beside a bed, a gleeful smile broke like freezing sunshine on the mouth, giving an absurdly neon glow to the face. It hugged the pictures tight to its icy, wounded chest and laughed childishly. 

The shadow would never be caught. The shadow would never be caught. The thought turned over and over in its' mind preying like a hidden disease upon the remaining sanity. 

And then, smoothly and quietly, the last hope of redemption for Paige Sullivan slipped out the window and into the alluring, deadly night.

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The madness of grief began to quell in the heart of Monique LaSaris. When one lost a brother, a near and dear soul to which one pledged life and allegiance, one was allowed sadness, bereavement if you will, and tears, shiny, crystalline tears. All of those were expected of Monique, and yet, they did not come. There was heaviness in her heart, but her smooth, bright face showed not an inkling of loss.

Monique had a bright face. It was full of brightness, sad but sweet, like silk trapped in honey on a winter's day. Her mouth was her best feature, it was sculpted nicely and it was very passionate, it had a drive to it that no one has ever possessed before and will not possess again. And even though she learned her brother was dead and his murderer also slain, the brightness did not go away. It remained on her, radiating with fresh vulnerability in the dim, sallow lights of the police station.

She looked like a fish out of water sitting in the grimy, desolate downtown police station that reeked of hearts breaking and loss wearing an expensive, little evening gown in a creamy, off-white color that made her look heavenly in this over-worked hell. Wisps of straight, blonde hair as fine and lovely to the touch as delicate lace framed that expressive face, and it fell to just a little below her shoulders in casual relief. Her tiny, pretty hands were clasped tightly together in her lap, and the cold, dripping jewels that adorned nearly every finger caught the light and sparkled in quiet hopelessness. 

A tall, well-built man in his early thirties lit a cigarette and sat down wordlessly next to her. He was dressed nicely, like the woman, in the formal black tie style that signified wealth and power. His sharp, aristocratic face held a slightly bored expression on it, mingled briefly with disgust and contempt. His dark hair was neatly styled and cut quite ruthlessly which lent him an almost military look. When he spoke, his voice was quick and low and reminded some of snow falling on ice.

"Do you want me to get some tea? Or coffee?" He glanced idly at his wife, and took a slow drag on the cigarette, seemingly savoring every last bit of smoke.

"No, I'm quite all right, Jack." Monique's voice was like a harmonious, contradictory symphony. It was ecstatically soothing, pitching forth its divine rhythm to ingratiate itself faithlessly into the heart of the listener. 

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." 

"And there's nothing you need?" Jack leaned back in the seat, keenly studying the events passing by around them. "Nothing at all?"

"No, Jack." And with those simple words, Jack sensed that Monique was slipping away from him, and if he didn't do something quickly, she would become forever unattainable and unreachable. 

"Monique, I…" He trailed off as he looked into her face, distant and electrified with some inner vitality. Without saying another word, he untangled her hands and clasped one firmly in his own.

Monique looked at their joined hands, needing to believe in what it signified. She smiled wanly and looked over at Jack, a thin film of unshed tears coating her eyes.

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At the edge of Hollenbrooke, where the city lights dimmed to a slender, fragile web of light and the pavement gave away to the fresh greenness of the grass, there was a neighborhood that was known by all as The Millionaire's Circle. 

Divine, many-colored mansions rose from their foundations up to the sky, nicely manicured lawns adorned the ground, and the semi-hysterical laughter from some obscure dinner party trickled out onto the streets, giving an air of richness and privilege to the night.

This was a neighborhood not many had seen, save the ones bored and special enough to buy a home within its discriminating gates, and for Riley Lennox, a boy who grown up living in virtual poverty, it was nothing short of a miracle that he had made his home here. In fact, his home was one of the most elegant and lovely of all the elegant and lovely houses in The Millionaire's Circle. 

It had a gracious thing, moving into the neighborhood, a relishing thing that tasted as sweet and alive as he imagined revenge would taste. The people that revered him today, the powerful businessmen and their sensuous, cashmere clad wives, would have, little less than a decade earlier, never have given the simple street urchin he had been another thought. They would have gracefully floated by, perhaps dropping a coin or two his way, and then continued on into the secretive, heavily veiled world of the rich. It was gratifying in more ways than one to know that he had now found a way into that world, and no one was the wiser.

He stood in the darkness of his bedroom, dressed in the remnants of a formal suit that he had worn to some wasteful, after-hour engagement that he invariably deplored, deep in his own world. He had passed a hand through his hair, ruffling and mussing the thick, mahogany layers that had once been styled into placidity. 

"Mr. Lennox," the idyllic, southern comfort voice of his secretary, Madelyn, arrogantly pushed their way into his thoughts and dissolved them cruelly. "I have Margo Sullivan on the line." She smiled with the cold beauty of the lamia, and then stepped outside his room with practiced ease.

He followed her, but before he completely exited the room, he walked briefly over to the mantelpiece and picked up a picture that was resting serenely on it. Trapped inside the picture was a young girl with fine hair as blonde as sunbeams and a passionate, vital mouth. He let his gaze linger there, slowly taking in ever feature of her face like a dying man looking for salvation. 

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	4. Vengeful ghosts...

Part 3

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"Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets…"

-Paul Tournier

The haunted, explicitly bright light of the morning sun trickled into the cramped, small enclosure of the motel room, shedding its brilliant light on the single bed and throwing the shadows of the worn, dirty corner chairs into definite focus against the dying yellow flowered wallpaper. 

A woman stood near the single, lonely window near the door, and gazed lazily out with scornfully dishonest hazel eyes. Sharp, tense worry lines took residence in the corners of her mouth and eyes, marring her quietly attractive face. A cigarette dangled expansively from her fingers, ash gathered in clumps at the tip, yet she paid it little mind and kept her focus trained on the weed infested parking lot outside. A thin, black silk robe was slipped over her petite figure, exposing snatches of uncovered, smoothly regal skin, and her feet were bare, grazing the filth-encrusted, mud-colored carpet with a necessary distaste.

Precious feet from her, wrapped in the thick, neutral maroon of the comforter, a man lay motionless; his face buried deep in the folds, hidden from her. A long-fingered, callused hand hung over the side, limp and impassive as death itself.

"Are you awake yet?" Her voice was blood dripping over sandpaper, rough and liquidly dangerous. "I have to get home before Jonathan, remember…" She glanced absently at the clock beside the bed where looming, incandescent numbers placed the time at half-past seven.

"I'm awake."

"And who could tell? You were just lying there like a corpse. I thought you were still asleep." She curled her lips derisively up and ran her fingers through medium-length black hair. 

"Lynzie…" The sound of his distressed, obviously annoyed tone had Lynzie smiling smugly and studying her newly manicured nails.

"You know you love me."

"I have no idea why." He moaned the words out with difficulty and pushed himself slightly up in the bed, trying to untangle himself from the comforter.

"Of course you do." The light of challenge shone in her greedy, malice-filled eyes. "You love me because I'm cold…" She crossed the room, flinging the cigarette to the ground without a care. "Because I'm calculating…" Pulling back the covers, she slipped off the robe, letting it fall in a magnificently adulterous heap on the ground. "You love me because I'm completely and totally wrong for you." 

She tugged her lover's pale, handsome face up to hers, and ran her fingers through his disarrayed, fair hair. "Tell me you love me."

"I love you." The sweet, jaded declaration was delivered rather breathlessly and with, in that one moment, with true sincerity.

"I know you do." Lynzie smiled and for the first time in years really meant it. "That's the only thing with you." She let his head drop and slid away from him, her soft, kewpie-doll mouth curved in a semblance of a frown. "That's the only thing."

"Are you leaving?"

"Hmm? Oh yes, I've got to go. Jonathan'll be furious with me if I don't turn in an appearance soon. I trust you'll pay for the room, as usual?" Lynzie admired her dark features in the bathroom mirror as she finished pulling a rumpled navy skirt over her hips. 

The man in the bed said nothing, but merely stared at the white plaster ceiling as if something immensely interesting had suddenly caught his attention. Under the comforter, he balled his hands into fists, the wedding ring on his left hand cutting into his palm like a dagger.

"It's been tremendous fun, dearest one." Lynzie sailed into the bedroom with her purse slung over her shoulder and her clothes haphazardly hanging from her small frame. Her stuck up wildly in every direction, but her face shone like a lighted candle flickering in the breeze. She bent down near the bed to pick up her silk robe and effectively jammed it into her purse. "I'll see you later, my darling." She swung out the door with exuberant abandon and determination, instantly forgetting the man in the bed the moment he was out of sight.

"Take care," The man's voice hit against the door and the walls, never reaching Lynzie, and sounding totally devoid of life and vitality. "Mrs. Freeman…"

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"So the only one left to notify is the wife?" Detective Paris rubbed the palm of his hand over blood-shot, azure eyes and pressed his mouth together in a hard, firm line. "What was her name again?"

"Her name's Lynzie Freeman. She's a wolf, like him and they've been married two years last March. According to Monique, she's also got a legion of lovers right here in Hollenbrooke and has been cheating on Jonathan almost from the get-go of their marriage." Detective Williams shifted a muddy gaze to Paris. "But that's beside the point."

"Whatever." Paris lifted his hand away to reveal a pained, exasperated face. "Where is she?"

"That's a good question."

"You don't know where she is? Did you call the Freeman residence?"

"Yes." An all-knowing, self-important smile of superiority spread across William's lips smugly.

"And?" Paris's patience had been worn to bits last night from lack of sleep and over-work. The last thing he needed to deal with were Williams's head-games.

"The maid answered. Said she hadn't seen Mrs. Freeman since about eight last night." Williams began to toy with an unsharpened pencil that had been lying on Paris's desk. "Supposedly, she and Mr. Freeman had a huge blowout, which resulted in both parties storming out of the house."

"Why are you smirking like that?"

"Smirking? Am I smirking?" Williams turned his back to Paris in an unmistakable gesture of contempt. "I didn't realize."

"What do you know that you're not telling me?" Paris forgot about his fatigue and focused intently on his partner's back. "Did you find something out last night researching at city hall?"

"I didn't find much out at city hall."

"So, what…"

"It's not related to you, Paris." Williams stuck a stubby, thick-fingered hand in his pocket and touched the pictures that were resting there to reassure himself that they were indeed still there. "It's not related to you at all."

"I don't…"

"You carry on the investigation from here. I've got a little research I need to do." Williams cut Paris off again and set the pencil he was holding back onto his partner's desk.

"I'll catch up with you later." 

Paris watched Williams walk away, a thousand valid protests on the very tip of his tongue.

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It was mid-afternoon when thick, black sheets of rain clouds began to roll into Hollenbrooke and blotted the hot, radiant sun from the sky. The wind picked up three-fold, blowing tree branches and leaves about, and made an intense bitter wailing noise that sounded more like someone crying than a breeze. The temperature dropped twenty degrees and a biting chill snapped on the heels of the wind, sending the land into a near frost.

It was in this wild maelstrom, this vociferous storm, Monique had decided to venture out away from the comfort and safety in The Millionaire's Circle to take her chances in the city. 

"Just visiting Marilyn- my second cousin twice removed. She's bought a house on Broadway, and I've been meaning to take a visit." That's what Monique had told Jack, with false smiles and artificial love. "Marilyn has been furious I haven't called, and she is a relation, Jack-love." She kissed him then, nothing passionate, just a simple peck on the cheek as one might give to a sibling. "You know Marilyn would be terribly disappointed if I didn't at least make a quick stop." 

Monique had taken Jack's new car, the sleekly silver foreign one that had been made in Germany, and had gone exactly twenty miles-per-hour over the posted speed limit all the way into town. Monique didn't believe in following the rules- she was one of those careless, vibrant creatures who floated in and out of reality, always looking for something new and exciting to enrapture her. For her, rules never applied. 

When she got to The Red Lion Inn on the corner of Johnson and Rio Vista, she parked the car and than proceeded to walk into the dim, unassuming lobby that made this hotel a favorite of people who enjoyed discreteness. Riley Lennox, as always, was waiting for her by the elevators.

"Riley, you're an absolute dream to this tired girl." She trailed an arm around his shoulders when she saw him. "You're an absolute dream." He responded in kind by simply guiding her into an elevator, which would lead them up to the suite they always reserved for their nights together. 

The suite was large and airily breathtaking, designed in a Louis XVI period style. A chandelier hung from the center of the room, crystals and diamonds dangling in the dark, and a gold, Persian carpet reminded Monique of luxurious quicksand. A fresh glass vase of white roses kept company with a bottle of wine and a bowl of fresh strawberries. The gold and blue bedspread was draped royally over an antique four-poster bed. 

"Does this suit you?" Riley always said those exact words every time they first opened the suite door. It was a tradition of sorts.

"It suits me very much." She hung her coat and hat on the gleaming, golden coat rack in the corner. "But I would prefer some candles."

"If you want candles, you can have them." Riley took a matchbook out of the glistening, cherry-wood desk and, one by one, lit the candles by the bed and on the table.

"Oh, Riley…" Monique laughed suddenly, her beautiful, little face shining in the dim candlelight, as if she had said something very clever or funny. "You must think me so wicked to be carrying on a liaison behind my husband's back. Why do you stay with me?" 

"I could never think you anything less than perfect, Monique." He cupped her chin in his hands and kissed her temple, handling her gently as if she were made of some delicate glass. "And we both know why I stay with you."

"I hate this, Riley."

"I know, but someday…"

"I'm getting tired of waiting for someday." Monique drew back slightly. "I think Jack might suspect."

"How could he? You said yourself he trusts you implicitly." Riley studied Monique with a concerned reserve. "He doesn't suspect anything."

"I'm afraid." 

"Of what?"

"You know Jonathan's dead?" She tucked a lock of stray hair behind her ear and looked earnestly into Riley's eyes. "They say the girl- Paige or something- murdered him. I don't think it's true."

"You don't think it's true that Paige murdered him?"

"That's right."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I just don't think it's true."

"Don't even worry about it. You and Jonathan weren't even that close anyway. Besides, you're not to think of it now, Monique." Riley reached up and took a hold of one of her hands much as Jack had done just a little over a few hours ago. "Tonight is for us."

"It just keeps turning in my mind, over and over like a broken record. I'm getting bad feelings and I…I feel like I'm being watched. On the way here, I was almost positive someone was following me…" Monique turned from him, and carefully went about the business of selecting the perfect strawberry from the over-flowing bowl. "I know that I'm a werewolf, not a witch, but…"

"Monique, like I said before. Now isn't the time to think such things." He walked over to her and tentatively put a hand on her shoulder. "No one's following you, and you're not being watched. You're just a bit shaken by your brother's death. That's all." 

He tilted her head back and moved closer to her, as if he was just on the verge of sealing his words with a kiss. The fear had left Monique's eyes, and she had put every ounce of her faith and trust into Riley.

Then, the bedside phone rang hoarsely, ruining the mood and the evening. Riley sighed with frustration and released Monique so quickly; she almost toppled to the ground. He helped her up casually and then went to answer the telephone.

"Hello…. Look what's this…. Yes…. No, I don't…. If that's what this is…. Okay…. I'll be there…." He put the receiver back on its cradle, and then hastily rushed over to where his coat and hat were resting on the coat-rack.

"Monique, something's come up that needs my attention. I can't… I won't be gone more than an hour-and-a-half. Wait for me?" He paused at the door, frozen comically between her and the impending disaster.

"You know I'll wait for you." Monique dropped gracefully into a chair and tucked her legs under her. "I'll always do."

After he had left, Monique settled into a tableside chair and uncorked the wine. Pouring herself a glass, she consoled herself by looking out the window and watching the rain fall in large, wet drops on the sidewalk below.

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~

A quarter of an hour later, the main door to the suite opened slowly and purposefully. Monique, who had her back to the door, smiled brightly, her face flushing in pure pleasure. Thinking it was Riley she called out: "Back so soon, love?" 

There was a silence that permeated the suite like chaos, turning things upside-down and leaving Monique's question unanswered. Monique could feel her joy dying a slow death, and being replaced with the hideous slide of panic. "Riley?"

The only answer was the swift closing of the imposing, wooden door; the old, rusted hinges groaning shut.

"Riley, is that you?" Every instinct in Monique's body was screaming loudly and painfully, every intuition nerve on fire with warning. She did not turn, in fact, was too afraid to face whomever it was at the door, and sat rigidly in the chair, still watching the rain outside. She could feel the urge to scream and cry out bubble up in her throat, but she beat it down, strangely determined not to make a sound.

When something touched her shoulder, a bare whisper of a touch against the soft fabric of her blouse, her resolve crumbled, and terror spread through her like wildfire. Slowly, so slowly, she turned, her eyes wide and bright.

This time she did scream.

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~


	5. Back Alley Conversations...

Part 4

__

"Memories are just where you laid them  
Drag the waters 'till the depths give up their dead  
What did you expect to find?  
Was there something you left behind?

Just fall away, and leave me to myself  
Just fall away and leave sorrow bleeding in my hands…"

-Fuel

When the setting sun, glorious and bright in the fading sky, sunk low over the jagged, rugged mountains to the west, darkness descended over the city of Hollenbrooke once more. This was a desperate kind of a darkness, one that brought sorrow, terrible and grievous, with it and slashed the hopes of the lost souls wandering around in the night, searching without abandon for the light at the end of the tunnel.

The rain and the cold of earlier had vanished; leaving a hot, tangibly sticky fog that surrounded the inner city like long-dead ghosts and spirits floating desireless among the merciless world of the mortals. The winds still moaned audibly, their wails echoing around the city in heartless pain and blowing miscellaneous papers that were cluttering the sidewalk. Somewhere, the melodious, steady rhythm of music worked itself up to a frantic, fever pitch, over-flowing into the lonely, dead streets. 

The terrifying slap of sneakers on wet pavement sounded far away in one of the twisted, back alleys that were so abundant in the downtown area. A chorus of shouts crescendoed up and over and down, mixing and spiraling into the heavy, distant air. A lone, shrill police siren pierced the fog, resonating sharply within the encasement of the city skyscrapers that glittered and glimmered within their roadside foundations.

The stench of red, gory blood arose from the corner of Rio Vista and Johnson, carrying its lifeless odor on the wings of the wind all across the inner city. There had been a murder committed, something violent and brutal that sent the sensitive senses into revolt and clouded the minds of the weary. 

To Cate Ramirez, a nineteen year-old pickpocket working the streets with an expert eye and even quicker hand, it was the only place she would ever want to call home. She was in her element here, in this wasteland of desolates and broken dreams, doing just what she did best- stealing from those who could ill afford to be stolen from. 

It mattered little to Cate, the hopeless plights of other people begging for help and dimes, killing themselves day by day in a thousand different little ways. She had learned long ago that there was only one person in this world that truly needed her constant attention and care- and that was her. 

She had ambitions, surely, though they were starkly dangerous ones that afforded little thought and even less action, but a great capacity for deception and back-stabbing. Her heart was hard enough to spend her waking nights dreaming of those ambitions, tucked within the safety of the abandoned warehouse that she slept and hated in, her insane fantasies weaving in and out of her depraved, young mind. 

She was lost, so dreadfully and woefully lost, she herself did not -could not- even begin to realize the gravity of the situation which she had steadily been falling into all of her life. She was young yet, and thenceforth did not comprehend that all of those ambitions were just that- fleeting dreams that meant nothing and had no bearing on the present reality.

As it was, she walked along the ruined, gap-filled sidewalk, her tall, thin frame carrying itself erectly and proudly in a manner that was completely uncharacteristic in this urban setting. Her long, black hair, curling at the ends, was tied back and tucked erratically under a battered, blue cap and the moth-eaten denim jacket she had bought at a thrift store for twenty-five cents, fell around her frame loosely. Baggy blue jeans concealed an appealingly well-formed figure, and the ill-fitting construction boots she wore made a disturbing, ripping noise against the concrete, as if they were literally cutting the sidewalk beneath them to ribbons. 

Tonight, Cate was looking for excitement, that blessedly wonderful feeling that came with taking things that were not yours to take. It was Cate lived for, would in the end die for, and in the between times, would nurse and love it as profoundly as one did with an exceptional lover. 

Seeing a golden opportunity in the form of an ancient, hunched over woman wearing a faded, torn dress, she smoothly, and without pause, began to quicken her pace on the barren, deserted sidewalk. A slight pang echoed in her hardened heart, a final pinprick of conscience that inevitably sprang up whenever she "borrowed" from someone so evidently helpless and alone. But when her stomach growled, rather loudly, what was left of her reservations fled with the single-mindedness of destroyed ideals. After all, morals didn't put food on the table or clothes on the back. 

Sticking her hands in her jacket pockets, Cate shuddered a bit as the wind began to pick up again, and moved in closer to her marked victim. In less than thirty seconds, all the hard earned money the woman had been saving would vanish, like smoke and mirrors into the hands of a shiftless juvenile delinquent. It was, Cate reflected briefly to herself, a damn shame.

The old woman was in reaching distance now, and with nimble fingers and swift movements, Cate grabbed the woman's over-sized, black purse from her right shoulder and ran as fast as Cate's long, tanned legs would allow. She could hear the cries of the woman, surprised and angry against the backdrop of the star filled sky. Remorse sprung up, quickly and suddenly like a stream of warm regret, but Cate shoved it away to the recesses of her mind. She hadn't eaten anything in a week, and now she had money to buy food with, some hot and delicious meal devoured in the low light of a fast-food dining room. That, not the grief and pain of the old woman, was the only thing that mattered.

She ran until she was sure she was far enough out of sight of the woman; Cate had no desire to see the inside of a jail cell. She took refuge in the dark shadows of an alley next to a small, decrepit, brownstone store with a sign that said 'Madame Crystal's Fortune Telling' in chapped, white letters set against a paint-chipped blue background. The only light that emitted from it was from the gaudy neon sign plastered unnaturally in the window. Cate couldn't see the words clearly, and in truth, she didn't care to.

She retreated to the back of the alley, which was swathed in a sort of individual black oblivion, and completely hidden from the street which was just a few feet away. Throwing herself on the ground gleefully, she pried open the treasured purse, examining her new found acquisitions with a perilous, childish joy. 

The purse contained two ten-dollar bills and a crisp fifty, all lying chastely within a bank withdrawal envelope, a can of mace, a picture of a young child- the face chubby with baby fat-, a ragged hallmark card signed in some illegible hand, and a thick paperback romance novel, its cover illustration promising plenty of passion and adventure. Ignoring everything but the money, Cate picked up the bills and waved them in her hands, a lightning smile bolting across her sharply angled face. She laughed soundlessly to herself, already picturing the meals she could buy with this forbidden currency. She did not think at all anymore of the old woman whose cries were still alive and plaintive, her anguish still woundingly fresh.

Cate tossed the remnants of the purse into the corner of the alley, a place of forgetfulness, of undiscovery. She kept only the bills, still clutched in her greedy hands like a child holding fast to a well-deserved treat, with petulance and self-righteousness. On a whim, though, she had also kept the romance novel, trashy and indiscreet as it looked. Tucked in the pocket of her denim jacket, it looked clumsy with expectancy and misplacement. 

Sensing it was time to leave, she lifted herself off the ground with a resourcefulness that only the very misguided possessed, with a sense of indecision and empowerment.

"So, is she dead?" The smooth, genteel voice floated sweetly to her from the alley opening, freezing Cate to her spot. Unsure who exactly the voice was talking to, she stood absolutely still, uncertain with fear and distrust.

"Believe me, she's dead." A second voice, harder and rougher than the first grated on Cate's nerves and came in the direction of the first voice.

"It got pulled off without a hitch. I was a little surprised, but you were right-again. It worked." 

"The only thing that matters is that she's dead and buried- along with her brother. They don't have anything on us anymore." Cate strained her human eyes to detect any movement in the alley opening, but the only thing she could see were two unformed shadows talking in low varied tones.

"No more sleepless nights and worrying."

"You said it." The smooth voice sounded suddenly oddly flat and distant, as if it were contemplating something of great importance.

"What's wrong?"

"You do have the pictures, don't you?"

"Yeah. I hired one of _Them_ to get it. Right now, Williams has it. You know, my contact in the police department? He's going to deliver them to me tomorrow at eleven at the café. He told me he'd update me about the situation."

"That's very good work. Meet me after you meet Williams, at our meeting place. Got it?"

"Got it. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Wait, wait a minute."

"Yes?"

"There's one more to take care of. Do you think you can arrange an 'accident'?

"What? Oh…you mean her. Yes, I can do it."

"By tomorrow night?"

"I'll see what I can do." The rough voice sounded gruff with poorly concealed annoyance.

"All right then. Take care." 

"You too."

This seemed to signify the end of the short, unclear conversation, as the two voices dissipated and all was silently calm. Cate did not know what the conversation was about or the hidden, deeper meaning lying beneath the calm, measured tones, but she could grasp, even through all of her terrible shortcomings, that this conversation was something evil, something horribly dangerous and hideously profane. It chilled her deeply, the words of the smooth, nameless voice, the words that it had so cleverly manipulated to sound harmless and unimportant. 

She stood there for a bare minute, the fog seeping secretively around her, into her heart, and her eyes. She did not move or even breathe, she just stood, thinking about the smooth voice and the rough one, wondering what kind of fresh death those words would soon bring.

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~

"Jesus, DeLuca, turn the volume up, will you? I want to hear this." A smattering of people crowded around the small, shabby television set propped haphazardly up on a table in the corner of a sleazy, blue-collar bar named 'The Watchtower', staring at two well-groomed news anchors whose smiles were as artificial as their good looks. The one named DeLuca, a short, over-weight man in his fifties with thinning hair and watery eyes, dutifully twisted the volume knob upwards with a thickly heavy hand.

"This is a special report from Channel Five News, I'm Kelly Atwater."

"And I'm Michael St. James."

"Earlier today the body of Monique LaSaris, a twenty-five year old local woman was found brutally murdered in her suite at The Red Lion Inn. Monique was the sister of the respected businessman, Jonathan Freeman, who was also murdered in a similar fashion just three blocks from The Red Lion Inn last Tuesday. We turn to Lisa Fitzgerald who is live at the crime scene. Lisa?"

"Yes, hello, Kelly. I'm live at the Red Lion Inn, and I have to say, this is a most unusual murder. No one, not even the police spokesman, is talking at this time. The general mood is here is very dark, very mysterious. I've heard the word 'occult' being thrown around quite a bit this afternoon, but I have yet to determine what this means."

"Lisa, can you tell us how she was murdered or the circumstances behind it?"

"No, Michael, I can't. As I've said, nobody here is talking at all. The only thing I've been able to verify is that Monique LaSaris was murdered by an unknown assailant sometime after four this afternoon in her suite. There are, unfortunately, no suspects at this time, and the rumor going around the press is that they have yet to find a murder weapon. That, of course, is simply speculation. Back to you, Kelly."

For a minute, no one said anything, and the bar was still and silent. Someone crossed themselves, a sign of piousness and superstition to ward off the evil that had somehow surely entered the room through this channel of hell, and another murmured a prayer in a foreign, middle-eastern tongue.

"Thank you, Lisa. We will be sure to keep you updated on any new developments as they arise. This is Kelly Atwater and Michael St. James from News Channel Five."

The two television anchors faded from existence in a static of black and gray, becoming obsolete and forgotten. 

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~


	6. Future Deceptions...

Part 5

__

"Battle not with monsters lest you become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

-Friedrich W. Nietzsche 

Ten Years Later: July 1989, London

"More tea? Or would you like the check now?" The smooth, richly accented voice of the waitress flowed over twenty-year-old Jolie Reeves, mixing and whirling into the foggy, night air like some long-forgotten lyric that had suddenly found its way to the light. A sudden, sharp desire for home and family sprung up inside of her, a deep, consuming longing that blocked the over-flowing pathways of her heart and reached down into the very essence of her soul. But she hadn't been home in a very long time, hadn't seen her family in what seemed like eons, those eons stretching far over the horizon obscuring her view of the past, leaving her only with an indistinct picture that afforded no clue or wish to what she wanted to see.

"Miss? Tea or check?" The voice with the heart-evoking, sensuous undertones reverberated through Jolie's head, sharper now, seemingly demanding penance for some outrageous sin. 

"Oh, tea, please?" Jolie usually didn't make a habit of sitting around tedious, self-important, London coffee houses at three in the morning, but tonight she had no passion to return to her tiny, cramped hotel room, for engaging in that activity meant that inevitably she would have to sleep, have to dream of a thousand horrible deeds gone idly wrong with no one to care or even grieve.

Jolie saw things- she saw into the souls of men and women and children, saw their deepest desires, their irrelevant hunger, the unrealized potential that would never be utilized. She saw what people were, what they were meant to be, what they could be, and reserved judgment, for it was not her place to judge. It was her place- her "gift"- to see all that had come and that would come to pass, Jolie had the sight, that rare, immutable gift that left her adrift in a lonesome, devastating world filled with people who neither respected or understood her awe-inspiring talent. Jolie was what some called "psychic".

Yet, even with her powers, she didn't associate with the Nightworld, nor had she any deep desire to. The Nightworld was a place for those who embraced darkness with wide and open arms, ready to receive the cold, insidious ice it offered without remorse or regrets. Jolie had been born to human parents, raised as a human, and therefore, perhaps unreasonably, she was determined to live her life as any normal human should. Jolie didn't- couldn't- realize yet that destiny held an extraordinary fate in store for her, the watcher of all things broken and torn, and that her life would never be ordinary.

But right now, in this space of time, Jolie was quite content to turn off that extraordinary mind of hers and convince herself that normality was right around the corner, along with it was a plain existence, one that included, but was not limited to, a cozy house, a white picket fence, and a dog named 'Spot'. 

It's fairly obvious, of course, that it wasn't normality that was around the corner for Jolie, but a new world of uncertainty and lies, a new world that could make her as well as break her, shattering her fragile form without any conscience or grief. 

"Your tea, miss. Can I get you anything else?" The exotic thrum of the voice was resplendent to Jolie moving across to her as it did, winding its way from the speaker to Jolie's ready and able ears, fresh for interpretation. It was a voice that told of countless sorrows and joy mingling together in an unlikely partnership, weaving together to form the tapestry of life.

"Thank you." Jolie smiled in appreciation, lifting her small, heart-shaped face up to the waitress's eager, sweet one, taking in every detail of the woman's face, reading every piece of her face, drunk with the wonderment that other people perpetually brought to her. "Thank you very much."

"You're…welcome?" The woman sounded slightly surprised and caught off guard, but being human as she was, she was still able to fathom that Jolie was thanking her for much more than a simple coffee.

Jolie watched the waitress leave, a smile touching her lips. It was fascinating to see into the lives and minds of others- if not always that polite. Jolie's concern for other people's privacy was minimal; it took a back seat to her own voracious curiosity.

"Anyone sitting here?" A young, aristocratic man dressed in a nicely tailored clothes took a seat in the small, plastic chair across from hers and smiled deeply, exposing perfect, white teeth. 

"You are now…" Jolie leaned over to him, propping her elbows up on the table and supporting her chin with her small, delicate hands. She tried to read him, but found herself blocked by a mental wall; a tall, unscalable wall that separated his mind from hers. Warning bells went off in her head, each sounding a distinct and distinguished response to the perceived threat.

"Is your name Jolie Reeves?" The noble boy stretched back in the chair, his long, lean frame extending to an almost prone position. He was trying to look at ease and his face, which was gorgeous in a artistic, sculpted way, was relaxed into lovely lines of flawlessness, exuding a cool, calm demeanor. 

"How did you know that?" She was pulling away now, caution causing her rose-petal skin to flush of all color, washing her face in white fear. Her eyes went sharp and suspicious, and every muscle in Jolie's body was ready to flee should he make any sudden movements in her direction.

"I've…" He paused momentarily, and leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling as if that would hold the answers he was searching for. He winced slightly, a beautiful wince if Jolie had ever seen one before, and then smiled at her, all charm and sweet surrender. "I've…heard of you."

"What the hell are you talking about? I'm sorry but I…"

"I need your help." He cut her off with hesitation, sitting straight up in the seedy, plastic chair, his eyes riveted to hers. "I need your help."

"What are you talking about?" Jolie relaxed once again, the feelings of threat seeping away with each second those brilliant eyes remained fixed on hers. Instead, a feeling of foreboding chilled her suddenly, cutting into her and ripping out whatever commonness she had previously possessed.

"There are things- situations, I should say- that require your expertise. A friend of mine told me about the girl who 'could see things no one else could'- not even witches." He reached out across the table and laid an elegant, long-fingered hand across hers, every inch of humanly possible anguish reflecting in his eyes. "I need you."

Those simple words said with pure and honest sincerity, undid her heart, wrenching unwanted sympathy from her mind, causing her gold-green eyes to cloud with irremediable indecision. She looked into his face as earnestly as she could, and sighed, her spirit going out to him in every possible way.

"I don't…I can't…" She broke off and shook her head minutely, intimate tears filling her eyes. "I don't even know your name, or what you want me to do. I want to help but…"

"You need some time to think about it. I understand." It made her want to grieve, seeing the bereavement flash across that enchanting face, injuring the intense glory of his features.

"I really want to help…" She trailed off again, feeling like some two-bit actress in a second-rate play. "Please understand…"

"Here's my number." He dropped a piece of paper casually on the table, just missing her teacup by inches. "I'm staying at The Savoy. Contact me if…if you change your mind." He started to walk away, walk forever out of her life into the nameless past where he would be relegated to little more than a simple rarity, out of her reach infinitely, when she called to him, her tranquil voice echoing through the din.

"Wait…I don't know your name?" Jolie made it into a question at the last minute, the corners of her lips quirking up in an irrepressible grin. 

He turned ever so slightly; his face amused again, his mouth shaped into that irresistible smile that Jolie was beginning to think she couldn't live without. His eyes danced in merriment, and his face was holding a certain kind of laughter, infectious and exquisite.

"My name's Riley. Riley Lennox."

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~


	7. A Dream Within a Dream...

Part 6

"Everything we see or seem is but a dream within a dream…"

-Edgar Allen Poe

In the early reaches of dawn, when the warring, spirited whirl of pinks and oranges streaked across the barely wakened sky with an unleashed fervor, Jolie returned, half-stumbling, and frozen with frightful drowsiness, to the small, seedy hotel room she had rented in the very slums of London for this special four-day vacation. 

Even now, with her essence tattered and ragged from half-a-night spent pondering the mysteries and intricacies of her encounter with that delightful secret man named Riley, she felt no desire to sleep, to fall into that abyss of other people's problems and lies, nothing to hold her back from the never-ending suffering that others managed to inflict with such swiftness on each other. She didn't want to let herself go, didn't need or want to feel the despair of people in such obvious need of help it ripped through her soul with a passion that seared her with the heat of a thousand suns. All she wanted to do- it was so simple really- was to fall, to fade away into some never ending whirlpool of pure and absolute nothingness. She wanted to vanish into that harmonious darkness and never- not ever- feel another drop of pain, never see what wasn't meant to be seen.

It was a hideous thing, this fate of Jolie's. It killed, expeditiously cutting and slashing at a Jolie's core, disrobing her of the innocence and purity that people like her needed like the honeyed, sinless air they breathed. Jolie had never wanted to be this way- had never asked for the shame and aching woe that plagued her sensations day and night. The only thing she could ever recall wanting was to be loved and to be understood. To feel like she belonged…

Fishing in her pocket for a key that would unlock the chipping, gray-black door that led to her hotel room, Jolie felt a certain despondency rise up in her throat and take hold there, a sober, numbing affection that abused her wooden heart. A sigh softly escaped from her lips, reaching out into the door, and beyond the bounds of this earthly realm.

She opened the door and fell on the bed like descending rainfall, rapidly and without pause, trying not to think of the things that would eventually come to pass. The very things that would eventually destroy her, turning her into ice and hate without a hesitation. 

She closed her eyes, taking that fatal leap into the unknown, hoping against hope…

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~

The graceful, dramatic tapping of falling rain hit the ground, every singular drop rolling and breaking like divine tears, whispering their woeful, weak song to any who cared to listen. Ominous, menacing thunder broke in the distance, rumbling and threatening like the low, impossible growl of a wolf on the hunt. Storm-force winds spurred the trees into a delicate imbalance, shaking their lush, green leaves wildly, and pushing their tenuously slender branches back and forth. A low, sultry, cry carried on the sharp winds, peaking in insane sensuality, outlasting even the torrents of the storm, and bringing with it a kind of obscene longing, something hollowly glorious and liquidly hopeful.

Jolie stood, in the midst of it all, water dripping and shattering down her face, mixing with her mascara to form solitary, black rivulets that fell like death from fatigued eyes. Her chocolate hair was thoroughly drenched, every strand saturated with the unendurable weight of water and regret.

There was nothing for miles; no houses or stores, or anything such thing that littered and scattered the earth into a state of dismaying disarray, but only the forest around Jolie with its' trees and the rain, the breath-taking rain that trickled from the neglectful, ashen clouds above. 

Jolie had always loved the forest when she had been a child, had always loved its supreme splendor, the way it had bestowed pleasure and love on a child so in need of a simple, kind word. She had once loved the sunshine, filtering through the trees in the afternoon, the way it hit the ground and the leaves, bouncing and shining in an endless play of happiness and joy.

But there was no sunshine now, only the everlasting surge of rainfall, plunging down to the soil like midnight melancholy, running down and around, bemoaning the depravity that had somehow taken root in this land of former elegance and exultation. Jolie couldn't help the magnitude of these woods, its' very core, pervade her sanity, severing her contact with the real world, masking the cool, blank façade of kindness that Jolie had becoming accustomed to slipping on. It was the forest of despair.

A twig snapping caught Jolie's attention, sending her alert senses into over-drive, a new vigilance that was far-too-long in coming. Every sound was magnified, enhanced a thousand degrees beyond the normal range of perception, all in a vain, useless attempt to stop the inevitable wave of the future that would drown Jolie like a lost swimmer caught in a rip-tide. 

"Hello?" The tremulous, tenuous strain of Jolie's voice carried over the sounds of the storm, fighting their way to the ear of some other that would respond in kind, and with proper reverence. 

The silence that met her greeting was over-bearing, it crashed on top of Jolie, its' enormity adding to the pitch of Jolie's terror. 

A swatch of movement near her right- the faintest flicker of blackness floating in the darkness of the trees near the side of the path, its true form obscured by the tempest- caught her eye and had her spinning around, ready to fight or flee, whichever the situation called for. 

A tap, a brush on her shoulder, had Jolie whirling, circling to face the terror that had no name.

A scream caught in Jolie's throat, a horrible scream that had her wishing that she would wake, leaving this dreamscape far behind and with it, the hideousness in front of her.

One brilliant, emerald eye beamed out at Jolie from a thin sheen of dampness, the other concealed in a mass of scarlet blood, still wet and gushing from a bloodstained wound on the forehead. The rest of the features were also covered; hidden by the blood of a hundred different wounds all over the face and head, except for that one impending eye, staring out in a murderous dejection. Dark, jet-colored hair was styled in a short cap reminiscent of the thirties or forties; ebony curls clinging to the bloody face like longing and desire. The figure was fragile and petite, radiating a homicidal vulnerability under the prim and bandbox navy dress that was stained with an abhorrent crimson. A single, silver ring, in the shape of a dahlia shone like pale faith, emanating out to Jolie in waves.

It was a young girl, or had once been, sometime in the far-reaching past. What was left of her, what was left of the girl that surely had previously been alive, was a mutilated fate, a gory nothingness that made even the most jaded soul want to turn and run in horror.

Jolie could not speak, could not move, could not breathe. Every nerve cord was ablaze with a dreadful fear, passing away into sheer panic, on fire with a shock that would be endless. She wanted to run, to scream and dash into the safety of recognized consciousness, to end this insane nightmare.

"W-w-who a-a-a-are you?" Jolie's voice trembled like a thousand leaves in the wind, unstable and vacant.

The girl looked at Jolie for a bare minute, studying her with that lone, emerald eye. A sense of quietness colored the situation, both girls hanging in the balance of each other- neither trusting nor accepting.

"I…" Jolie began to say something, anything that would help or alleviate the mystery enfolding them.

"No." The girl shook her head, uttering the only word Jolie had ever heard her say. Her voice was a timeless sonata, something that broke hearts and mended them all over again in the space of a second.

"Excuse me?" Jolie was almost too bewildered to say another word, too stunned by the voice of this enigma of a corpse, to say anything more, but the individual question lodged its' way from her heart to her mouth in a sort of obscenity. 

"No more." The girl shook her head again and placed a finger on Jolie's mouth, leaving a smear of red upon Jolie's lips like a seal. "No more at all."

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~

When Jolie awoke, hours later, hopelessly entangled in the winding, interconnecting strangles of the crisp, blue bed-spread, every inch of her skin was either burning with intense, heated terror or drowning, slowly and languidly, in cool, sudden drops of sweat. 

Her hands were shaking, shaking so hard and so deeply, Jolie didn't ever think they'd stop. A tremor racked her spine, running viciously from the base to her skull, enrapturing her in its scintillating madness. Trembling, wracking sobs were just moments away, her gold-green eyes already filling with haunted, unforeseen tears. Her chestnut hair stood wildly on end, but she didn't bother to smooth or touch it- it seemed completely pointless in the light of this new, startling revelation. 

Jolie didn't dream like most people did, in ensnared, fractured memories or metaphors twisted until they resembled flighting passes of passions, but when Jolie dreamed, she dreamed of people, people that needed something. She dreamed the dreams of people long dead; their bodies rotting in their graves in a cemetery in some desolate place she knew little of. Jolie carried their burdens, the heavy, rolling weight of them, and made them hers, sticking them in her heart like a dagger slicing home.

Usually these dreams, these apparitions of the past and souls, did not strike her for they were already gone, too far away and unreachable, that to help would be insanity preying upon the sane, a house of cards tumbling down like a waterfall of disease, unhealthy and unclean. It wounded her true, to be honest, but nothing more another night, another dream would not cure and some new vexation would fall upon her without reserve, clamoring for the aid of one who knew not what to do.

This dream, though, this soulless carnival of wreckage and loss, was close to her, and not yet beyond her reach. She could feel it, tugging at her in a way that she could not deny or ignore. The feeling of the girl, _The Lost One_, was crawling under her skin, producing agony in heart and mind simultaneously. 

The girl needed something from Jolie, needed some absolution from a problem too worldly and costly to bear herself, needed some relief from a riddle to complicated to realize. Was Jolie the sort of person who could turn her back on this? Could she ignore and continue on with her life? What was Riley's part in all this? Did he even have a part at all?

Jolie watched the flickering night-lights of the city blink on and off, over and over, caught in some timeless circle of ecstasy, never slowing or stopping. The shockingly white piece of paper lay on the beside table beside her, winking and fluttering with the breeze of the open window. The black, black ink stared up at her, the bold hand of the aristocratic boy mocking her in the semi-darkness. _(0)20 7836 4343 ...(0)20 7836 4343 ... _The numbers began to roll inside her head like a mantra, fusing themselves to her memory.

Jolie wasn't a heartless or cruel person; she didn't disregard what was in clear need of assistance and aid. That being as it was, she cast her gaze on the ancient, beige telephone lying haphazardly on the small, folding table opposite the bed. It was the only way, in Jolie's estimation, that could ever possibly rectify this sphere.

Casually getting up from the bed, still dressed in the clothes she had worn at the coffee shop, she took a seat in out-of-place, black wicker chair, and picked up the receiving end of the phone, the piece of paper clutched in her hand.

__

(0)20 7836 4343… She dialed it with an unusual apprehension, that feeling of foreboding compressing her of reason. Was this the right thing to do? Why did she feel so worried, so nervous? What did the girl mean when she had said…?

"Hello, may I help you?" A friendly, benevolent voice lit up the other end of the line busily pushing its' way into Jolie's world. 

"Yes, I need to speak with Riley Lennox? Hmm? Yes, I know it's late but it's urgent…" 

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~


	8. London Regrets...

Part 7

"Well, sweet Daisy girl  
Now your coattails have come undone,  
Your whisper's a scream now  
Since you don't speak to anyone

Little girl in your white ice skates,  
We've seen your face walkin' around the old school gates,  
With a hand on your hip and the other one on your head,  
You realized it wasn't gone, but lost instead…"

-The Wallflowers

The swirling, inexplicable stream of vapid, coarse city lights spilled into the Lennox hotel suite, shedding new and profound light on the ornate, elegant pieces of furniture that lay in a cluttered mass by the window, and cast the edges of the room into deep, boundless shadows. 

A young woman sat on the love sofa, her slim, small legs were crossed restlessly at the knee and her graceful, courtly face was drawn up into tense, rigid lines that did little to mar the inherent beauty of her appearance, but strangely enhanced it, giving her an air of annoyed sweetness. She wore a conservative, black dress whose hem-line just brushed mid-thigh and the shiny, silvery-white buttons that ripped down the front gleamed in the light pouring through the window like drops of moonlight that had accidentally fallen from the heavens and onto her dress. 

Her hair was the color of glittering opals, sliding in shimmering waves down her back, unclasped by any such hair clip and left to its own deliciously sensual devices. Two slanted, violet eyes slashed across her face like long, purple dashes of paint and revealed the exotic, Asiatic qualities that dominated her petite, angular face. Her hands were fragile and demurely smooth, unadorned save the glow of a wedding band on her left ring finger, and in her right hand she grasped a crystalline wine glass filled to the brim with a chilled, blood-colored liquid. The other hand was tautly folded on her knee with a degree of excited fear that not even she was aware of. 

She made a lovely, ghostly picture, sitting on the cheerfully worn love sofa bathing in a backwash of exuberant, kaleidoscopic light that arose and descended upon her lovesick form in bilious waves, silent and still as any devoted artistic subject. No one watching her, watching that pale and melodic figure, would ever guess that underneath the serene and thoughtful façade lay a robotic subservience, a hollow slip of a person that eternally served and never took, a person whose own pain was minimal to the suffering of others.

Daisy Lennox was a selfless person, a woman whose clear, concise intelligence was blinded by her heart and the emotions in which they oft partook, leaving her vulnerably defenseless against the inhumanity of others and the knives they wielded like shields. This vulnerability, this weakness she carried around like a badge under fire, was probably one of the defining reasons she had ever agreed to marry the attractive, captivating Riley Lennox. He was her immortal protector, her slender lifeline to the world she knew little of, and a constant companion to whom she had pledged her unending love and devotion. 

It was, in fact, this ceaseless devotion on Daisy's part which kept them together, for without it, Riley would have surely broken and drifted away like a tumbleweed in the desert wind, forgetting to remember anything they might have shared. Indeed, Riley hadn't always been like that, carelessly negligent to the needs of others, but Daisy, poor Daisy, could never possibly understand that the melancholy of Riley was not something she could cure, she did not yet know that there were things unspoken, wild, secret delusions as of yet unshaped. Daisy could not possibly know that she couldn't ever be anything more to Riley than a distant star, beautiful and illustrious, but distant, no closer to him than the far away moons and planets circling the sky in their removed orbits. 

Daisy Lennox was often this way, for she was a hollow woman, a woman who could never see that this was the way thing should be and to change them would be to die, lost in a million separate and distinct deaths. Perhaps this was another reason why Daisy had married Riley at all, out of the sheer incapacity to see things as they were and to twist them in her mind as to make it somehow possible to change the impossible.

At least, this was what Riley Lennox was thinking as he stood in the hollow of the doorway watching the rise and fall of that exquisite girl, feeling everything between horror and antipathy and back. He had never known quite what to make of this self-less child he had somehow ended up marrying, had somehow ended up falling to and living with, giving nothing and getting everything in return. Daisy was paradox to him, a thing that went beyond the bounds of normalcy and into the realm of the unknown, an unreachable capacity for which he was never quite worthy of achieving. 

There was no question he was completely unworthy of her as he was, broken and shattered beyond any distinguishable recognition, and that she should, if she had any common sense about her, leave him and start the innumerable search for the one who could pragmatically heal the many wounds Riley had no doubt inflicted upon her during the course of their seven year marriage. And therefore, in light of Daisy's pure unselfishness and sweetness that would never find an equal in this world or the next, it was a shame she had to have fallen for someone as completely unmerited to her profound and phenomenal ways as Riley, someone who would crush her loving and unselfish spirit without even realizing. 

And yet, this was the way Daisy was, at once vacant and penetrating, superficially shallow and so very, very deep. She loved unwisely and when she gave that unwise love to someone, she gave it everything, she gave it all she was and had and would ever, could ever hope to be. It was in this respect that Daisy transcended the simple expectation that people often boxed her into, and became a sphinx of secrets, never certain but always sure. It was what had initially attracted Riley to her, that summer on the docks of Lake Odessa, when she had walked past him in that tiny, navy excuse for a bikini and that covert, Mona Lisa smile promising she had done splendid, clandestine things and even more magnificent, dangerous things were hovering about in the next hour. It was in that space of delicate time, that framework of glorious inattention, that Riley had forgotten Monique and the things that lay like slashed crepe de chine between them and focused on Daisy and the buoyancy that would help him forget, if only in for a little while.

He had seen that exact quality in the girl Jolie tonight, that unrestrained levity that could never be pushed back or renounced even by the most ghastly of tragedies. And he had sensed something of a tragedy in Jolie, a sort of grisly dismemberment that disfigured the essence and the core of a person until there was nothing left but the facsimile of a shadow and the levity that was but a mere eclipse of what had once been there. He recognized Jolie as a kindred soul.

The telephone rang beside the bed, lifting Daisy and Riley out of the moment and into themselves, ruining the bare agitation of the instant, spurring it on to roll and dive away from them, away from them into the city and beyond. A flash of regret resounded in Riley's mind, pulling with it the lost regret he had somehow tumbled from and into, ignoring as swiftly and neatly as he did Daisy. It was with this great lamentation that he disjointed himself from the concave door hollow and into the actual room, tugging himself to mechanically stand beside the bed and lift the phone and bring it to his ear.

"Hello?" Out of the corner of his eye he could see Daisy whirl and look upon him, startled and amazed to have the trivial concentration she had placed so much stock in, dishonored by an unusual voice coming at her from an unknown distance. 

"Yes, Hello? May I please speak to a…Riley Lennox?" It was the voice of Jolie coming through the receiver, swimming across the range that separated him from her, like blessings and disallowances attacking his meager defenses without pause.

"This is he."

"Oh, this is…this is Jolie. We met at the poetry house last night? You asked for my help?" Her voice was so doubtful it made him want to rush over to wherever she was and protect her, cover her from the sure and painful distress she must be feeling.

"Yes, I remember. Does this mean you've changed…"

"Yes." She cut him sharply and the nerves in her voice were jangling like live wires. 

"You'll help me?"

"If you'll have me. I know I seem young, and to you I must appear somewhat inexperienced, but I can assure you I am not as naïve as I can look like to others." She paused, and he could hear her warm breath on the telephone, wondering if she should continue or not. "I can see things."

"That's why I chose you, because you 'see things'. You can view what others cannot, what I cannot. You can glimpse the death of ones who deserved not to die."

"I can help you."

"I know." Everything was silent for a second, and neither Jolie nor Riley said a single thing, each one wondering what the other was thinking.

"Riley?" Jolie broke the silence first, saying his name like an epiphany she had just now discovered, wonderful and new.

"Yes?"

"We have to go somewhere don't we? We have to go to…Hollenbrooke?" 

"Yes." Bewilderment shot through him that she could pick that up, could pick up from him where and when they were going to have to travel to find the disorienting aberration that hexed Riley day and night. "We have to go to Hollenbrooke." 

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~*


	9. The Kiss of Death...

Part 8

__

"Through me you pass into the city of woe:  
Through me you pass into eternal pain:

Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.  
All hope abandon, ye who enter here…" 

-Dante   


Hollenbrooke 1989

"She has to die." The rich, smooth voice floated out of the shadows of the room and mingled briefly with the indigo cigar smoke, twisting like a writhing snake in the cool, damp air. "You know she does. This time she's gone too far. She is… threatening us." The voice- a young, ambitious one full of ebullience- lowered an octave and shifted, breaking into something more sinister and perverse. "She would destroy us all."

"I know, but she's so…" A short, balding man stood by the light of the open door, toying tensely with his lapels. He was perhaps fifty, or there about, and had the impure, diluted smell of a shape-shifter coating him like a contagious robe, disgustingly second-rate and filthy. 

"She's so much trouble that could be easily eliminated. Without her neither of Them have a leg to stand on. You know that as well as I do." The voice was like a treat to the balding man, for whenever it spoke, the man's greasy, beady eyes would light up like twin candelabras, shedding a light of malevolent voracity out of their murky depths. "She must die- and die without suspicions. It should look like an accident." 

"Not that I'm questioning you- which I'm not- but I would just like to point out that instead of killing Her, it would be so much easier to kill Them." The balding man shifted cumbersomely, looking hopefully into the corner of shadows where the voice was coming from, and smiled faintly, quirking his thin, yellowish lips up in vigilant relief. "I mean if you kill them, it would make it all go away. Just go away…"

The silence that met this hesitant response was deafeningly loud, hauntingly resonant in all of its cessation of sound. The balding man began to nervously dart his eyes around the room, and ran a thickly bloated hand through his non-existent hair, a habitual gesture of anxiety that he had never quite broken. With each passing second of silence his previous hope vanished and his perturbation heightened to a rabid pinnacle, intensifying with each dragging moment of soundlessness. 

"Are you questioning me?" The voice that rose from the shadowed corner held barely restrained violence, which promised without question a deathly, horrific fate to those who dared to cross it. "Do you think I'm not competent enough to handle the details of this?"

"Not at all, Sir. I just meant…"

"We both know that it is not possible to kill Them. That would be a… gross mistake." The brutality in the voice had dwindled to near nothing, and the tone it occupied now was one of slight amusement, brought on by pleonastic malignity. "You know that as well as I do."

"I do. I…um…uh…well? W-w-what kind of an accident?" The balding man stumbled through his choice of words with an unreserved, awkward lack of dignity and culture. "Should she die painfully? Or quickly?"

"I'll leave that up to you. Be as inventive as you like. Fake a car accident, decapitate her and then stick her head on a pike and display it in your living room, or whatever else you have a yearning to do. I needn't remind you that you're the assassin. The only thing you need to do is to make sure nobody suspects or finds out." The voice was pungent with crystallized humor, and it was full of money, old, wealthy money. 

"When do you want her…killed?" The balding man's frenetic agitation had increased three-fold, causing apprehensive beads of sweat to form and roll down the shiny, hairless dome of his forehead. 

"I'll give you a week. By the end of next week she must die. If she isn't dead… serious complications could arise." The voice paused in its spiraling path for a brief moment, as if carefully choosing the next words that deserved to be spoken. 

"Sir?" It was only after several minutes of the strained quiet in which neither of them ventured a word or emotion that the balding man dared to speak, lifting his bulky frame from its hunched posture to stand at unwarranted attention. "Is there anything else?"

"You won't be alone, you know. I have my man in London- as we speak- setting up the trap that will eventually lead her straight to you- and her untimely death." The voice continued on as if it hadn't even heard the balding man's questions. "All you have to do is kill her. That's all you have to do." The voice rambled onwards into the room and pressed themselves onto the simple, balding man, confusing and exciting at the same violent time.

"She'll be gone. You won't have to worry about her anymore." The balding man turned to go, curving his massive frame around towards the safe exit of the door only a paces in front of him, relieved and doleful to be out of the presence of the infinite voice.

"Wait…Williams." The urbane and polished voice called the balding man Williams back from the brink of oblivion and death by two inconsequential words, which lay heavily in the room like weighted stones. 

"Yes?" Detective Williams contorted his hands together over and over again, the air singing with his cowardice and anxiousness.

"We both know this…job is my way of letting you prove yourself again. If this situation ends up anything like the 'Detective Paris' job I assigned to you before then I assure you that all will not end well. Do you understand?" The voice had lost its amused tone and took on a hard edge, which could not be described by the normal bounds of emotion. 

"You won't be disappointed this time. I promise."

"For your sake, I hope you're right. But just remember, Jolie Reeves is dead by next week- or you are."

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~

Diabolic, sepulchral clouds swarmed around the city of Hollenbrooke, the rain of the night bursting forth from them in a massive streaming quantity, coating the world in a wetness that left everything singularly murky and unformed beyond any singing of it. The winds wailed in repose, each bitter moan screaming in a reverence that died in the face of something so magnanimously evil. 

It was an unusual night to visit the Hollenbrooke cemetery; very unusual to brave the cold, vengeful winds to seek refuge in the desperate weeping willows and the cold, crumbling tombstones, and yet to Ana Spencer, twin sister to a young girl whose name had once been Claire, there was nowhere else in the world she would rather be. The cemetery, for all its' talk of death and other worlds, was safe haven for Ana, a place of hope and peace that fueled her warring soul like no other.

She was kneeling on the muddy, water-soaked ground; her tanned pantyhose and forest-colored skirt becoming more irreparably soiled the longer she stayed on her knees. A small, plain, granite grave stone stood before her, homely and modest in its' appearance, and unevenly cool to the touch. Elegantly engraved letters, fading after the distance of years and weather, dominated the face of the stone, simple and quiet; small, timid accusations set forever in the dreadful granite.

__

Claire Spencer

1931-1951

Beloved Daughter and Sister

May She Rest In Peace

It was true that Claire had been dead a long time, it had been almost thirty-eight full years since the night the State Trooper had knocked on Ana's door an hour past midnight, waiting to shatter her life into a million different pieces that could never be picked up or put back together again. Sometimes late at night, when everything was still and nothing could be heard except the forlorn melody of a lone bird, Ana imagined she could hear a knock on her front door, imagined she could hear the words of the State Trooper, circling over her head like vultures looking for a fresh kill. 

__

I'm sorry to disturb you ma'am…Your sister Claire…She's dead…" 

Raindrops fell across her lovely, ancient face like lost tears, mingling with her mascara and running down the length of her face in black rivulets. Her unpainted mouth was open slightly in unrecognized pain, as deadly as a knife pointed to the heart. Grief flowed from her like a river, a lost river trapped forever in an abyss of sadness and pain. 

She clutched a folded picture in her small, narrow hand, a picture of a girl little older than seventeen with a cap of stylish black curls and looks more striking than attractive. Claire Spencer hadn't been beautiful or even, for that matter, really that attractive if you measured her by the staggering classical sense. Instead, Claire had a charming look to her, a look that was vitally alive and stunningly arresting, desirably eye-catching in all its charismatic brilliance. She had a smoky, piercing emerald gaze, which was at once innocent and seductive with the fresh look of the young and promising, and with the recent context of her death, the eyes that stared out from the beyond the grave were given a new dimension of disturbing eerieness. 

Ana failed to see that in death the innate sense of purity and kindness that had once prevailed around her sister like a blessed halo was gone, replaced with darkness that had crept inside those sweet, guileless eyes and twisted that virtuous smile into something almost sinister. To Ana, Claire was still her sister, her blamelessly compassionate sister who never gave a thought to herself, but only to others. Ana didn't even fully realize that Claire was truly gone- there were even days when Ana would call out Claire's name forgetting for a sincere moment that Claire was wasn't there. Ana refused to see what a demon death had made of her dearest Claire. 

Ana smiled to herself grimly, the lines of strain showing at her mouth and drawing the skin tighter around her cheekbones, and plucked a rose from her coat pocket, pushing against drenched, chestnut shaded tresses with the palm of her hand. She said nothing, but merely tangled the rose and picture together, accidentally pricking herself with a thorn. Crimson blood trickled from the tiny wound, dropping soundlessly at the foot of Claire's headstone. Ana firmed her lips together in a straight, thin line, examining the thorn-prick with absent interest as she placed the picture and the rose next to the small bloodstain that was already fading due to the voluminous amounts of rain.

A stab of foreshadowing sliced its' way through her soul, cutting her cleanly to the bone, and ripping her mind apart. She was a witch, a true and wise witch who never ignored what she felt in the deepest roots of her body and soul, a witch who always listened closely to the splintered heart that beat beneath a thin woman's frame. She could feel the whispering pangs of fate, slow and perfectly supernatural, reaching up and catching her, spinning her around in a vicious circle again and again and again…

Ana could feel it, could feel the gaze of her sister on her, those eyes boring into hers with a passionless disgrace, that mouth contorted in a black hearted laugh…

She could feel it, feel her sister ripping and slashing… ripping and slashing… dead… So dead…

Ana left, running all the way to the cemetery gate, her legs hindered by pumps and weighed down by wet material thrashing and driving, for the first time feeling the genuine threat. She left the headstone, she left the rose, and the picture of Claire, the dazzling, murdered Claire, to stare up at the raging sky with those brilliant emerald eyes, planning her revenge alone.

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~


End file.
